Albert Einstein famously said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex … It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

He was speaking from his experience in theoretical physics, but he could have easily been talking about what passes for contemporary economics. As a result of having so many intelligent fools, most people have absolutely no understanding of contemporary economic ideas.

You can’t open a newspaper without reading the analysis of an economist regarding some arcane economic statistic, and how we need to do more to stimulate the economy. What does that even mean? These veritable geniuses can’t for a moment consider that the same principles that run a successful household – prudence, responsibility, thriftiness and savings – are also essential principles for running a nation.

Somehow, once the modern economist gets to the macro level, they think pumping borrowed money into the economy (anywhere will do) will ‘prime the pump’ and get the economy going. And because it’s all borrowed money, some generation down the line will eventually sort it all out.

There have been plenty of Einsteins in economics, who saw past the needless abstractions and the reckless, prideful pretensions of complex statistical models and understand the true long-term effects of economic policy. Unlike physics, however, there are plenty of parties whose interests are greatly advanced by hopelessly muddling the debate with endless complexity. A true economist sees past the short-term effects of government policy and sees, in the words of Henry Hazlitt, “… the longer effects of any act or policy … not merely for one group but for all groups.”

Of course, this always leaves an opening for sensational opportunists to decry the heartlessness of the economists. All the woes of the world are piled at their feet: they cause foreclosures, they allow the poor to die in the street; I’m sure these refrains are a familiar song to you by now. This is like blaming the weatherman for the weather that spoiled your picnic. Any honest and perceptive economist saw the mass foreclosures coming; they were the result of bloated government entities granting complex mortgages on overpriced houses to those who never would have qualified in a free market. Easy government money always creates speculative bubbles, and it is always the poorest who suffer in the resulting depression, while the government (you, through taxes) keeps well-connected businesses afloat, all in the name of ‘stimulating the economy.’ Never has getting ripped off sounded so humanitarian.

These arguments, to help one party at the expense of others, always come cloaked in the guise of morality. The economist, who coolly stresses that we cannot get something for nothing, is decried as an immoral monster. Minimum wage laws, for example, can’t magically raise wages without an adjustment made somewhere in the bookkeeping.

Therefore, jobs that aren’t justified at the new wage are destroyed. Now we have an unemployment problem, and we need to pay unemployment benefits. ‘Illegal’ immigrants come to fill the vacuum of necessary but low-paying jobs at the original wage, before it was made illegal. Now people are miffed, because they don’t have jobs and those willing to work below minimum wage do; now, they want to build a wall across Mexico. One ‘humanitarian’ intervention invites another, and the government is called upon to fix each problem it created, when there was no problem to begin with.

If the true costs of all these government interventions in the economy were apparent through direct taxation, we would all be more critical of government spending. But the costs are hidden away through the black holes of national debt and inflation, an indirect form of taxation as your money loses value in your hand. These are sure paths to ruin in the long run.

The free-market economist has quite possibly the most thankless job in the world. She must continually stress, against the turbulent ups and downs of popular emotional responses to economic situations, that in the long-run, there is no conceivably more efficient and elegant system for coordinating the wants and needs of humankind than the free market, and that free competition makes the price as close to actual production cost as possible. It is when the government gets involved, first to “fix” the free market and then to prevent reckless companies who exploited the artificial bubble from collapsing, that we all get burned.

Perhaps you have wondered at the complexity of contemporary political and economic notions, suspecting that your own common-sense method of fiscal prudence and personal moral compass is the answer. Well, you’re absolutely correct.

And with the experience of living under the mercantilist British Empire, the Founding Fathers enshrined these Republican ideals in the United States Constitution. With radical simplicity, they recognized that society operates best when government has as little of a role as possible. But intervention in the economy crept in, to “fix” the market, and then to “fix” the damage with more intervention.

The language of morality was used to demonize cool-headed economists who saw the long-term effects at every turn; this insidious use of collective moral language undermines real, individual morality as well as undermining real prosperity that fuels individual action.

We need to return to the Constitution and get the government out of the economy and out of the business of printing paper money, which is expressly prohibited in Art. I Sec. 10. It is an uphill battle; economic hokum has been the standard fare for quite some time. This flim-flam ignores basic economic truths, asserts that we can magically get something for nothing, uses morality to justify government intervention and fights needless wars overseas that pour private funds into the pockets of contractors.

Yes, friends, economic mysticism is one hell of a racket.

Gavin Beeker is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].